The very wonderful Kim Lenaghan invited me on her show on Sunday morning to shoot the breeze, tell the story of The Dock, and share my love of all things Titanic…

You can listen in (for only another 27 days! hurry!) by clicking the link here – go straight to about 19:20 if you want to find the start of the interview.

Kim also invited me to do a desert-island-discs thing with some of my favourite music – it was an interesting challenge to pick out just three pieces.  Anyone who knows how much I like my life to be underscored by the extremely DRAMATIC and EPIC barnstorming soundtracks of Hans Zimmer won’t be surprised to find that some of his music (Crimson Tide) made it onto the list – as did a fantastic song by Sara Bareilles, ‘Chasing The Sun‘, which has a killer line in the chorus which encapsulates so much of the risk and adventure and wonder of the Dock story:

You said, remember that life is
Not meant to be wasted
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just run…

And for my last choice – because it’s a truly lovely song, but also because it transports me right back to the early days of Dock Cafe (the music video was filmed in the cafe just a few months after we opened), Robb Murphy’s ‘Love in Abundance’ – give your eardrums a treat and press Play!

As you’re tootling along in the Wee Tram, you have the unalloyed pleasure of my cheerful face popping up on the video screens to tell you a little bit about all the sights we’re passing as we loop around the Titanic Quarter.

The videos were kindly sponsored by Titanic Foundation, and now that they’re complete, we have a set of 21 little 90-second tasters for all the sights, sounds and stories of the shipyards.  Looking at them as a set, it’s quite amazing to realise just how much good stuff is packed into our beloved TQ – from all the amazing heritage assets like the slipways, the Thompson Dock, the Nomadic and the Drawing Offices, to all the signs of new life and new growth (like the clip of the Titanic Belfast time-lapse I posted last week)

So I thought you’d like to see a one of the videos in its entirety – the one (natch) which tells you all about this amazing little Honesty Box cafe where community thrives, hope lives and the busy world pauses for a golden moment:

This Is The Dock… Life in the Titanic Quarter from The DOCK on Vimeo.

You’ll notice that I thought it was probably best to talk about The Dock as a neutral third party (rather than bursting into sobs in the video and exclaiming “It’s my baby!  I LOVE it!”) and consequently it’s really cool to hear tram passengers’ unedited reactions – many have visited and loved it, many have heard that there was some sort of honesty-cafe-thing in this part of town, and some people, hearing about it for the first time, just can’t get over the concept – which is a good reminder of what a daily miracle it is!

Another little milestone in Dock-World… we’ve filled a complete Visitors Book in Dock Cafe!

When Joe commissioned some lovely leather-bound visitors books for the cafe when we had just opened back in 2012, it seemed impossible that we would ever run out of space.  Hundreds of pages, eight entries per page… there would never be that many customers through our doors, would there?

(This was back in the days when the amount of customers in an entire day might be less than we now have waiting outside when we open the door in the morning!)

But looking through the completed book now – it does the heart good to see the multinational, multicultural multiplicity of people who have signed their name and home and comment on every page of the book.  From the very first entries in 2012:

…to the last comments filling up the (now rather frayed) final page:

…page after page after page tells a story of visitors finding a welcome, wanderers finding a home, individuals finding friendship, busy people finding peace, stressed people finding space, sorrowful people finding a smile, sceptical people finding faith (or sometimes just some experience of God, or grace, or something divine that they can’t quite put their finger on…)

Enlarge the pics if you want to see just a very small sample of some of the messages (and if you want to see, yet again, what an incredible difference the smiles of the Dock volunteers make to those who come in through the doors)

Or better yet, call in soon and leaf through the book yourself – we’ll leave the old completed book alongside the nice empty fresh one for a while.  And if your name isn’t in those pages somewhere, maybe it’s time to add a comment and join the Dock story yourself…

We’ve had a birthday in our midst in Dock-World over the last week – hard to believe, but Dock Market is one year old!

The Dockies celebrated in true quirky Dock Market style at the market last Saturday, as you can see – always dangerous to give a bunch of boundlessly creative people an excuse for a birthday party!

Dock Market is something really special.  For a start, the quality of the goods & foods on offer never fails to blow me away.  These are people who opened up a little market stall because they are phenomenally, world-beatingly good at something – whether it’s painting, baking, tie-dying, jewellery-making, candle-creating or any of the hundreds of other gifts on display at the Dock Market stalls.

It may have come from small beginnings, but the Dock Market stallholders can be really proud of themselves – it’s impossible to leave the market without being tempted beyond the limit of human endurance!

And then there’s the atmosphere of the place as well – which never fails to be noticed by the customers too.  The Dock Market gang have become a family – the welcome is warm, the craic is mighty, and the very spirit of the place reverberates with the love and laughter and life that characterise The Dock.  It’s an awesome place to while away a Saturday afternoon.

Well done gang – and with all my heart – Happy Birthday!

For up to date opening hours, see the-dock.org/market